Observing the Slackware community in general I noticed that individuals make several distinct choices in how they set up their boxes and I am curious to see what set of choices different Slack users have made.

In a nutshell here are my questions:

1. Do you use multiple distributions on your main machine(s)? Do you run mostly Slack? Do you run mostly something else?
2. Do you use an automatic updater (swaret, slapt-get, etc.)? If so which one? Why or why not?
3. Do you use Dropline Gnome? Why or why not?
4. Other than the above how many non distribution packages do you use?

THIS IS NOT MEANT TO START A FLAMEWAR!!! As I said before I am interested in getting a better profile as to why individual users make the above choices as a whole.

I'll start off:

1. I use Slack on most of my main machines with one Tao Linux server. I also have a FreeBSD and OpenBSD box, but for the last 2 years and change have not used any other distros for more than a month or two at a time, though I have covered the gambit of the top 10 on distrowatch.

2. I do not use an autoupdater, though I am experimenting with slapt-get. My reasoning is that I do not trust the automatic process to not mess something up. If I mess something up manually chances are I can get myself out of it. If an automatic process messes something up, first I have to figure out what it did. I need to trust an application before I will use it. Whether it is trustworthy is immaterial.

3. I don't use Dropline Gnome. I used to in the 8.x, 9.0 days, but when 9.1 came out the Fonts looked fine and I found that was the only thing that I really cared about from DL. Most anything else DL gives me I can get elsewhere. I am also primarily a FVWM user so most of DL UI enhancements are things I do not see. Finally I do not like that DL installs PAM onto the system. (See last two sentences in #2)

4. I use quite a few custom packages (about 2 dozen), aterm, eclipse, mplayer, fwbuilder, and postgre being the highlights.

Thanks in advance for any responses. Especially civil ones.

1) My main machine is Slackware only, I also run FreeBSD on another machine. I have, like most others, I guess, tried out several distros before settling with Slackware.

2) I use swaret to update non-critical packages, I don't let it touch things like my kernel, libc etc.

3) I don't use Dropline, I totally dislike both KDE and Gnome as a whole. I used to have Enlightenment, but have now settled on XFCE, lightning fast and easy to use.

4) There are many many non-distribution packages on my system. Such as Eclipse, Firefox, Thunderbird, Postfix, the list is endless

1) Slackware only, I don't need/want another distro/OS right now. I'm very comfortable with this.

2) Slapt-get, i really trust this program, it doesn't try to make something else than updating/installing a package. (I must admit never tried Swaret but I see good critics about it, i'm just used to slapt-get right now)

3) I've never used DL since I don't like that it replaces some default packages. Anyway i don't like GNOME, i use XFCE and now i'm switching to Fvwm 2.5.10 (after 3 days of configuring this little thing rocks).

4) As djbanaan said, there are plenty of them like Firefox, Sylpheed, some libs, Valami Commander, CenterICQ, RealVNC etc etc.

1. usually i see no need to run multiple distros except for testing purposes. so for example, i'll have my main distro of the moment on hda1, and then put another one on hdax for testing.

2. i used to use swaret with slack but no longer use it mostly because of the reasons you mentioned.

3. i don't use dropline gnome. the few times i installed it, it would cause problems with gedit and evolution, where i would click the X to close the application, and it would just stay open for 10-20-30 seconds before closing. very annoying, so i removed it. my fonts were already good in slack 9/9.1, so i didn't see any use for dropline (especially since i ran xfce4 ).

4. lots and lots. aterm, gmplayer, thunderbird, sylpheed, gpasman, xpad, nessus, gaim (does that come with slack? can't remember), giFT/giFTcurs, grip, xfsamba, streamtuner, and on and on. that's one of the main reasons i moved away from slack, in fact. arch has most of the non-slack packages that i use a lot already built as binaries. it's just way easier and faster to let someone else deal with that and have it WORK than to always have to build everything "extra" myself and keep it updated (or use linuxpackages buids, which only seemed to work for me 1/2 the time). i think slack is a really great OS (maybe better as a server than a desktop, though) but i find that i since i switched to arch i am enjoying using my computer more for some reason.

No, just slack.

Definitely not. And definitely not because I like to break my
dependencies myself, rather than letting others decide what
goes together and what doesn't. If I wanted that I'd use deb,
gentoo or even Mdk ...

No, I don't, and I can't stand Gnome, no matter which
version or package ;)

ATM ~ 70 custom packages... 42 compiled since upgrade
to Slack 10

Pity ;}



Cheers,
Tink

1. Nope, just slackware - I don't see why I would do that.
2. No, not really. I believe I don't feel it is that important if anything is up-to-date as long as its working properly.
3. No, I use Fluxbox. I heard the deinstallation procedure is painful BTW.
4. maxima (a great computer algebra system), firefox, scheme, aterm (looks cool).

1. I also have freebsd, but I seldom use the partition due to a accident, see sig

2, No. If I have to use one, I would use slapt.

3. It messed up my sister's PC. I also learnt to fully test a distro before really use it

4. Actually, slackware lack many things. CJK support, fonts, freetype, good image viewer....etc. I have like 300MB packages in an extra CD. It install packages, patch and configs that I need.

Thanks for the replies. I was shamed into counting, I use 39 custom packages on my laptop, probably a few more scattered about on other systems. Though it seems most of you use more than I do. Not sure why but that surprised me.

codec: what image viewer do you use? I just use rox for preview and then open in imagemagick, which works after a fasion. Could use a better one though. (I don't like eog and don't have KDE anymore to save those responses.)

Tinkster: A little bloodthristy aren't we? Did I touch a nerve? (It was your total vehemence on the subject of swaret on another thread that made me start wondering about this by the way.)

Yep ;) ... always in for a holy war.

And yes, I do have a very strong view on the topic
of automated package management and dependencies.
I find the approach of making something like swaret
or slapt-get appalling in itself, because the beauty
of Slack is full control and responsibility for your
own system.

The only thing closer to the roots would be LFS :)


Cheers,
Tink

I use GQview for viewing images. Nifty little program with automatic thumbnailing and other cool stuff like slide shows. Me likes plenty! You should check it out.

Edit: Also available in a handy Slackpack at linuxpackages.net

1. Do you use multiple distributions on your main machine(s)? Do you run mostly Slack? Do you run mostly something else?
No, Slackware 10.0 on my big box and 9.1 on my laptop. (Both have custom kernels though.)
2. Do you use an automatic updater (swaret, slapt-get, etc.)? If so which one? Why or why not?
No, unless you count slackpkg. I check the change log every few days and decide whether to upgrade or not.
3. Do you use Dropline Gnome? Why or why not?
No, I use Icewm. The difference between 92 or 69 running processes at idle is worth it to me
4. Other than the above how many non distribution packages do you use?
A bunch, kismet and ethereal on my laptop, digital camera stuff on my desktop, OO.org, etc.

1. I have 3 machines: Primary machine is home built, running Slack exclusively. Secondary machine is a Shuttle box dual booting between Slack and Suse. Laptop is an IBM T40 dualing (or dueling ) Slack and XP

2. Absolutely not, I don't trust them, and there's nothing that they can do that I can't.

3. In the past, I used to use Dropline in order to simplify installing Ximian Evolution (my Email client of choice) on my first machine, but I have since put Dropline on the back burner. I consider Dropline to be a worthwhile shortcut that is helpful to newbies - installing your own packages can be a bit intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that big of deal.

4. Probably about a dozen. As indicated before, Evolution is key for me, plus I like xcdroaster, Audacity, Firefox, etc.

Above all though, I will second Tinkster's comment that Slackware = Control over your system. As I have learned more about Linux, I have become increasingly reluctant to surrender that control to an outsider, such as swaret, Dropline, etc. -- J.W.

I agree with you both, though I am not as adamant. Right now I am trying out using slapt-get with --download-only as a shortcut to grabbing the updates for the non-custom packages. Once they are downloaded I still upgrade by hand those packages I feel should be upgraded. Traditionally I have kept a mirror of the release and that has worked well for me in the past, but I figure it wouldn't jurt to experiment a bit.

What I find interesting is that no one who has commented so far uses either DL or swaret et al. Not to prejudice any further responses but I was figuring on about 35% swaret usage and no idea on DL. My theory (so far not panning out) is that many of the swaret users are past RPM based distro users or users who have at least a couple RPM based distros in the mix.

Edit: djbanaan, thanks for the tip on gqview. It is better than rox + display, that's for sure. Of course that is not a high bar to pass either...

My machine can boot:

FreeBSD
Debian Sarge
Slack 10 (use swaret for installing packages)
Gentoo
(20 gig a piece)

Dropline Gnome - nope, just use Gnome 2.6

Non-standard packages - Mplayer

1. No. Just Slack. I took several other linux distro's out for a test drive (Red Hat, Gentoo, Mandrake, etc...) but did not find the kind of control over my OS that Slack gave me. I haven't looked at another distro since.

2. I use Swaret, but........I don't just blindly let it update everything. I pick and choose what I want to update. I first install the updated packages on a test install and see how they work. Once I know they work good without any problems, I install them on my main install.

3. I don't use DG. When I was using Slack 9.1, I did try DG on a test install. Well, it looked prettier than regular Gnome. I didn't like the updater (felt to much like windows), the inclusion of PAM (I'll wait until Pat V. decides to includes it) or the deleting of programs, like Xine, by default (it should be an option to get rid of them, or better yet, they could be left alone and just excluded from the DG menu). Anyways, I'm very happy just using Fluxbox.

4. I usually like to install from source, however....I do use packages like Firefox, Thunderbird, and a few games from linuxpackages.net. I tend to download the packages created by Jim Simmons (maintains the site) or ones that have the highest ratings (3 checks). They seem to work the best. Again, I test them out first on a test install before they get to my main install. As for other distro's packages, I use 2 rpm based packages for my video card (ATI) and scanner driver (Epson). Of course, I do a rpm2tgz on them first.

MagicMan